John P. Clum: High Adventure in the Wild West

John P. Clum The Bureaucrat Who Captured Geronimo

Or John P. Clum, turn-of-the-century Indian agent, newspaper publisher, and politician, audacity was a way of life. Consider:

In January, 1874, while serving in Santa Fe, he found time enough away from his Signal Service duties to become a founder of the local Young Men's Christian Association and to befriend Territorial Governor Marsh Giddings. So close had Clum and the politician become that Clum lived for three months in Giddings' suite at the Palace of Governors while the governor was away on business.

Clum might have stayed in Santa Fe were it not for the Dutch Reformed Church, whose members nominated him to the federal government as an Indian agent, a job that paid the handsome annual stipend of $1,600. So in August, 1874, Clum found himself at the San Carlos Indian Agency in Arizona Territory.

This was a heady place to be. Just six months earlier, the Apaches had surrendered to Army troops after having, in the words of First Lieutenant J. B. Babcock, "committed sundry acts of violence upon citizens of the United States, notably the murder of three men on the opposite side of the Gila River.. the destruction of a house and murder of the inmates on the San Pedro . the murder of citizens on the public road and the theft of a number of horses from peaceable inhabitants of the Territory."

The Indians who had been hiding in the mountains, Babock said in a letter to Clum, "were pursued by the Military forces and punished... They came in, band by band, and surrendered to me as the representative of the General Commanding."

Clum, who stood a stocky five foot eight inches tall, was full of himself. He became an instant expert on the Apaches. Two days after he assumed his post, he held a council with the "Chiefs of the Tribes" presumably band headmen and announced himself "pleased with their deportment and conversation."

He told the men he would be inspecting their villages about sunset. In a report to the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Clum said that as soon as the Apaches finished working on the reservation farm, "they hastened to clean and arrange their houses and to prepare all for my visit.... I was warmly greeted by the chiefs and warriors of each band. The men, women, and children were formed in line for inspection and count [about 800 of them]. Their houses [built of brush] were very neat and clean, and every observation impressed me in a most favorable manner. I think they are far more intelligent than any other tribe I ever met. I am becoming better pleased and more interested every day, and I trust that your Department will lose no time in furnishing this Agency such funds and implements etc. as

I shall immediately recommend which are vital to the prosperity of these Indians and the success of the Agency."

Clum also deemed that the success of the agency and “his” Indians depended on his having absolute jurisdiction over their affairs. He decided the best rule was self-rule, and he took the unprecedented - in the Southwest, at least step of organizing an Apache court and police force. Meanwhile he instructed the U.S. military that it had no responsibility on the reservation unless by his invitation. Clum's Indian court and police force are echoed in today's federal policy of Indian selfdetermination.

Before long the people at San Carlos gave Clum a name of their own: Nantanbetunnykabyeh, “Boss-with-the-high-forehead,” a reference to his rapidly receding hairline. During his three years as Indian agent at San Carlos, Clum earned the respect of most of the Western Apaches among whom he lived and for whom he had genuine respect and affection. His standing among the Chiricahua Apaches, however, was not so elevated. In 1876, Clum was required to bring in all the Chiricahuas who were living in southeastern Arizona after the revocation of an 1872 executive order establishing their reservation. And, in 1877, Clum's men had taken Geronimo, a Chiricahua leader, captive in New Mexico and brought him to San Carlos as prisoner. Clum later touted this event as “the only capture” of Geronimo. For his part, Geronimo pointed out that his If the capture by Clum was based on a ruse, and he taunted his enemies by reminding them that “you never caught me shooting.” If the Chiricahuas disliked Clum, members of the U.S. military establishment liked him even less. Since its creation in 1849, the Department of the Interior had been responsible for the management of Indian affairs. But on the frontier, management was often left in the hands of the War Department. Army personnel accused civilian agents of coddling Indians, while Army supporters in Congress and among journalists decried the “mawkish sentimentality” of Indian agents, who after 1870 were nominated to their posts by Christian religious denominations.

Clum carried on a verbal and written war with the military in personal and official correspondence and in the newspapers. It was an extreme example of the struggle taking place throughout Indian country.

His own fight climaxed in 1877. He made a pompous and public offer to “assume responsibility for all Apaches in Arizona,” one not surprisingly rejected by the Interior Department. He then let it be known that he would not submit to an inspection of his agency or its Indians by the Army, and, when his notice was ignored, he quit. On July 1, he packed his bags, never again to serve in the role of Indian agent.

Clum had not been too busy as Indian agent to form a road show consisting of 22 San Carlos Indians. Billed as “Wild Apaches,” in 1876 they toured Washington, D.C., via Saint Louis and Cincinnati. The Saint Louis performance, the only one given, was less than successful financially, and it appeared that Clum would have trouble repaying the $3,000 he borrowed for the journey. But in Washington, the commissioner of Indian Affairs was persuaded to cover the cost of their return trip, including a visit to Philadelphia.

The agent accompanied his troupe on the return trip as far as El Moro, Colorado. There he left them and headed back East to Delaware, Ohio at government expense to become the groom of Mary Dennison Ware.

When and where Clum had met Mary is unclear. She was the niece of William Dennison, onetime governor of Ohio, chairman of the Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln, and a former postmaster general. Clum had proposed to Mary by mail, and she had accepted. They were married on November 8, 1876.

John and Mary honeymooned in San Francisco before taking up residence at San Carlos on the first day of 1877. She was with her husband when he moved to Tucson, where he studied law and where, in 1878, their son Woodworth was born.

The family next moved to the town of Florence, and Clum became an attorney. He bought The Arizona Citizen from his friend, John Wasson, and published the newspaper in Florence for a year before moving it back to Tucson. In February, 1879, it became the first daily to be published in Arizona. The present Tucson Citizen is its direct descendant.

Meanwhile, silver in large quantities was discovered at Tombstone. Alert to the opportunities, Clum sold the Citizen and took his young family to the bonanza community, arriving there in April, 1880.

Clum, Billy Breckenridge, and the brothers Earp all of whom emblazoned their names in Tombstone's history converged on the new mining settlement soon after it changed from a disorganized frontier camp to a genuine village. Incorporated in December, 1879, Tombstone needed a justice of the peace court, town ordinances, and a marshal.

Like the Earps, Clum was a staunch Republican, and his newly founded Tombstone Epitaph reflected those political sentiments from its first issue, published in May, 1880. He supported Republicans, among them Wyatt Earp, for public offices, and he dueled editorially with the Tombstone Nugget, the rival Democratic newspaper, whose principals were active in Territorial government in Prescott and Pima County. The Nugget was inclined to support the “cowboy faction” of Tombstone, men who tended to be Southern Democrats and whom Clum referred to as the “cowboy curse.” In December, 1880, Clum was touched by tragedy: his wife died giving birth to a daughter. The infant died a few days later, and the bereaved father was forced to send his young son to live with relatives in the East.

The following January, less than three weeks after Mary's death, Clum beat his Democratic opponent in the race for mayor of Tombstone by an overwhelming vote of 532 to 165. As if that were not enough, he served as chairman of the board of school trustees in 1880-81 and was twice Tombstone's postmaster, once in 1880-82 and again in 1884-86.

During the interim, he went to Washington, D.C., to serve as clerk in the office of the chief inspector of the Post Office Department. He married Belle Atwood and fathered a daughter, Caro Kingsland Clum.

Clum acquired many detractors in the sharply factionalized political terrain of Tombstone, as he had done during his stay at San Carlos. Then and now, for example, some would characterize Wyatt Earp as "notorious," but Clum regarded him as "my ideal of the strong, manly, serious and capable peace officer." He remained firm in this conviction even after the infamous 1881 OK Corral shoot-out. Three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday had a showdown with Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLowery, and Billy Claibourne. The result was one of the most celebrated and debated gun battles in Western history. To the extent that there are ever winners in such confrontations, the Earp faction came out ahead.

No favorite of Clum was Territorial Governor John Frémont, who, despite being a fellow Republican, appointed Democrat Johnny Behan rather than the celebrated Wyatt Earp as sheriff. Frémont, Clum charged in an editorial, had made "a bargain with the Democrats, giving them the control [of Cochise County]. The Republicans, by virtue of a 250 majority in the whole of the county's last election, were at least entitled to a share of the offices." Moreover, wrote Clum, Frémont "has been practically nonresident of the Territory, and has shown no interest in Territorial affairs, save when it was to his own personal interest to do so, or to the interest of some of his friends."

The Arizona Enterprise, a newspaper published in Florence, had reported that a petition was circulating to have Clum reappointed as San Carlos reservation Indian agent. Reading the Enterprise article newspapers throughout the West received papers from other communities a journalist with the San Francisco Stock Exchange posed a question joyfully reprinted by the Tombstone Daily Nugget: "How many public teats does Mr. Clum want to pull at once? He is already postmaster at Tombstone, and Mayor of the city. He has been an Indian agent once, and didn't impoverish himself at it by any means. He would like to have gone to Congress as a delegate, and wouldn't now mind changing places with Frémont. The truth is, Clum is a chronic office-hunter."

In May, 1886, during Clum's second Tombstone sojourn, a fire destroyed Tombstone's Grand Central pump house and hoisting works, a disaster from which its mines never recovered. Sensing this was to be the case, Clum and his new family left Tombstone for California that same year. After a varied career that took him throughout the United States and to Alaska, and after a third marriage following Mary's death in 1912, he returned to Tombstone in 1929. There he helped kick off the city's first annual "Helldorado" celebration.

In 1931 he made a sentimental journey to the San Carlos reservation, where he reminisced with elderly Apaches who recalled his days as Indian agent. His granddaughter, Marjorie Clum Parker, tells the story: "The great moment had arrived. John P. Clum looked quickly at the Apaches and started with a slow, halting step toward the long-anticipated reunion. At the same instant an old Indian, wrinkled, gray, but erect, stepped out from his companions, waved his cane, and came forward gesticulating.

"'Nantan-betunnykahyeh,' he shouted feebly....

"Grandfather hurried. His lips moved but no sound came from them. The two old fellows met. 'Goodah-Goodah!' White arms and red arms entwined. Words were mumbled. For a moment, they stood in silent embrace John P. Clum and Goodah-Goodah, one of the original Apache police....

"A dust cloud appeared a half a mile up the road. An ancient Indian pony was heading our way, half-walking, halftrotting.

"Sneezer, riding bareback, whacked his heels against the pony's ribs, finally slid off, and finished the journey on his own unsteady legs. Half blind but smiling, Sneezer shouted something in Apache. Father looked quickly at the interpreter, 'What did he say?'

"'He said pony too slow.'

"Again two old comrades met, over a lapse of 50 years again the embrace, a glimpse of tears.

"There was a luncheon and an hourlong 'smoke' in the semicircle of red men and one white. Young Apaches stood around on the edges listening. When the goodbyes came at last, Sneezer, dry-eyed but very serious, spoke.

"'We will never see you again, Nantan Clum. We are both old men. We have lived long and seen much. Goodbye.' On May 2, 1932, Clum was picking a rose in the garden of his southern Califor-nia home when he died of a heart attack.

But the final Arizona adventure was yet to befall the former Indian agent.

In 1936 Woodworth Clum completed the book, Apache Agent, an autobiography that had been started by his father. Twenty years later, Hollywood came to Arizona to make a movie out of the book, titled Walk the Proud Land. It starred World War II hero Audie Murphy as John Clum.

Still later, all of Clum's personal papers owned by his family were deposited by Marjorie Clum Parker in the University of Arizona Library's Special Collections.

Field historian Bernard L. Fontana has written about Kit Carson, Bill Williams, and many other historical subjects for Arizona Highways. Photographs reprinted, with permission, from Apache Agent, by Woodworth Clum, University of Nebraska Press, 1963.